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Ben Coli, Brewer / Owner
Mitchell Warner, Brewery Manager

About Dageraad Brewing

Dageraad Brewing is named after the Dageraadplaats, a neighbourhood square on the east side of Antwerp, Belgium. The brewery strives to transport a small piece of the beer culture in that square home to British Columbia.

About ten years ago, during a youth well-spent tramping about the world on a budget, Brewer and Owner Ben Coli met three Belgians in Laos and became fast friends. Over the years, Coli returned to Antwerp several times and at least once each visit he would find himself in the Dageraadplaats (“sunrise square” in Flemish) drinking the legendary beers of Belgium.

Those first encounters with Belgian beers inspired Coli to begin home brewing. After a surprisingly successful first attempt Coli was hooked. Interest grew into obsession, and a period of intensive study at brewing school was intermitted by two beer sabbaticals to Belgium spent crisscrossing the country, visiting breweries in tiny Flemish villages and in abbeys in the Ardennes. During these journeys, Coli took extra advantage of his setting by picking Belgian brewers’ brains to discover what made their beer so amazing and returning to the Dageraadplaats again and again, of course!

After years of study, setbacks and hard work, Dageraad Brewing came to be. The brewery isn’t much to look at; just a handful of brewers reveling in their modest collection of stainless steel tanks in a warehouse in Burnaby. But as Coli learned during his visits to Belgian breweries: “It doesn’t take grandeur in a brewery to make magic in a bottle.”